A Lamb Stew With a French Onion Twist
The New York Times
Simmering meat in a deeply flavored broth is an easy, adaptable way to dinner, J. Kenji López-Alt writes.
This simple stew, made with lamb shanks, barley, greens and a big pile of onions, didn’t come about through planning, but rather through circumstance.
As often happens when I shop with my 4-year-old daughter, Alicia, we arrived at our home in Seattle with a pile of ingredients and no real plan. Recently, that pile included lamb shanks, and a five-pound bag of onions.
Lamb shanks are best braised, and a bag of onions always reminds me of soupe à l’oignon, French onion soup, (a favorite of my wife, Adri), so combining those ideas seemed natural. And it’s something I learned from my old chef Jason Bond. In 2002, he was chef de cuisine at No. 9 Park in Boston, where he had me slowly stir onions over low heat until they were a deep, sticky brown. We deglazed them with red wine and roasted veal stock, then added seared beef short ribs and cooked the whole thing just under a simmer until the meat was tender enough to cut with a spoon and the broth reduced into a rich, glossy sauce.
